


Justified

by V_Alchemista (Giggi_Hikit)



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M, relationship if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 12:11:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19991989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giggi_Hikit/pseuds/V_Alchemista
Summary: A retelling of Raylan back in Kentucky.





	Justified

It’s an odd mix of disappointment and excitement when Raylan hears that name from Art’s mouth. “So you know him then?” Art asks, light and sarcastic like he always is, how Raylan remembers him to be from Glencoe. But, like then, it was always Art’s eyes you had to watch, because they were razor sharp, dissecting Raylan in his near slack-jawed excitement that wasn’t quite, because all he could think of was that Boyd had never left. Not truly.  
  
“We dug coal together,” he hears himself echoing, because the thought’s rushing around in there, sadness that wasn’t quite that. He could remember him, as plain as day, the cocky nineteen year old that was all teeth and swagger, honey and poison drippin’ from his mouth. The boy that was just as likely to kick back shine as he was to recite the philosophical debates of the world. And for all that, that Boyd could have the very world eatin’ out of the palm of his hand if he so wished, he hadn’t gotten out.  
  
But then again, neither had Raylan really.

  


\---------------------------------------------

Ava is just as he remembered, all light and corn spun hair, weightless. Like some ghost from a far off memory. “I was 16 when you left, Raylan,” and he smiles at her, as if age had been the reason he hadn’t taken her with him.  
  
He doesn’t remember much of her, if he’s honest with himself, but more the idea of her; the wide-eyed Harlan girl that would trail after him from time to time, laughter and smiles that he could’ve sworn he could sometimes hear from down the street, over the deep thumping of Arlo’s fists against his flesh.  
  
He has trouble melding the two, this fiction of her and the woman he sees before him, with the woman in the file that sits on the passenger seat of his car. His stomach sinks with the lighthearted way she asks if he’d like to feel the bump on her skull from when Bowman had slammed her into the stove, as if that was a normal thing to ask. He supposed for her it _was_ normal. At least it had been. And he tried to see what she must’ve looked like, pointing a shotgun at Bowman Crowder’s chest over dinner, tried to fit it in with the light and laughter he remembered of her. But then there’s a sneaking memory, one hazy summer afternoon when he had taken her out, showed her how to aim and roll with the recoil of the new gun she had brought to him, gift of her uncle, and her insistence he show her how it was really to be handled. Remembers the way she had leveled and shot, eyes hard, spine like steel as she held the kickback. Raylan thinks she must’ve looked a little like that, blowin’ a hole through the youngest Crowder’s chest.  
  
He’s happy he came when he did, standing in Ava’s hallway to catch the Florida boy with gator teeth around his neck and swastikas branded into his flesh. Happier more when the name ‘Boyd’ drops from his lips; Raylan’s heard that name more times in the last twenty-four hours than has in the last twenty years. He hadn’t been able to find Boyd the other day, when Art had initially sent him down, the other as elusive as a fox, though Raylan hadn’t been able to tell if it had been on purpose or the other really hadn’t heard yet that Raylan was back. He pushes the other into his car, this Dewey Crowe, and tells him to pass on a message, just in case Boyd really hadn’t heard: that Raylan Givens was waitin’.  
  
His heart hammers in his chest as he watches the car drive away, something twitching in his fingers, and he’s nineteen again, standing in front of the mouth of his first mine. Because if there was anything Boyd was, he was danger personified.  
  
And it’s been nothing but Boyd Crowder since Raylan’s feet had touched Kentucky soil, and he wonders if that’s what one would call fate. _It’s providence, Raylan_ , a nineteen year old Boyd Crowder says in his head, in that slow, dramatic way of his, and Raylan can’t help but wonder if Boyd would sound the same after all these years.

\-----------------------------------------------

He waits with Ava the rest of the day, making sure to call Art to let him know he’d be in Harlan a little bit longer, side stepping just why that was. She asks if he’s sure he’d come, knowin’ that a Federal Marshal was skulking around her house. He laughs, though it’s more a huff of air and a smirk than laughing, saying of course he’d come. She just asks why he’s so sure; he answers back, “Because Boyd is Boyd,” and if there was one thing Raylan knew with a certainty, even after all these years between them, it was Boyd Crowder. At least in this.  
  
He ignores the clenching in his stomach as she looks as him, coy flirtation in her eyes as she tells him, like a school-girl confessing a crush, that shooting and killing wasn’t what Boyd was liable to want from her. He just smiles back at her, not saying a thing, because Raylan knows Boyd.  
  
The rest of the day is lazy, with Ava’s constant chatter and light feet. But Raylan can’t settle, because he knows Boyd Crowder is on his way, and it’s not the ghost of some 16 year old, still naive Harlan girl or the wife turned murderer and widow to his brother that he was coming for.

\------------------------------------------------

He thought about sitting in the dining room at first, let Boyd walk in and work to find him after a bit. But Raylan’s nerves were too high to let him sit calmly until Boyd finally decided to show up. So he stays in the hallway, pacing back and forth slowly, rolling a bullet in between his fingers just for something else to do as he ignores the way Ava’s eyes track him the entire time. He also ignores the thought that this way, he wouldn’t have to wait to see Boyd either.  
  
It’s half past nine and completely dark when Raylan finally hears the thump of boots on Ava’s front porch. He spares the woman a glance, head motioning for the kitchen, making sure she actually goes in before turning his full attention to the door in front of him and the man outside of it.  
  
There’s a pause, a small moment of complete silence, like a shared inhale between the two before the white washed door is being pushed in, and Boyd’s waltzing in, as easy as you please. He doesn’t look anywhere else, eyes immediately going to Raylan as if he had already known where exactly he’d be. And he’s nearly exactly the same, as if time had plucked him right from Raylan’s memories and set him before him, all smiles and swaying hips.  
  
“Why Raylan Givens, as I live and breathe,” and Raylan was right, he sounded just as he had when they were nineteen, except that his voice was just a hair lower than he remembered, sitting lower in the base of Raylan’s spine, “lookin’ like a real lawman,” and Raylan is a little surprised to hear that it’s more complement than mocking.  
  
“Boyd,” is all Raylan can think to say, trying to keep the twitch of his lips more smirk than smile, but from the way Boyd’s eyes dance, Raylan doesn’t think he was quite succeeding.  
  
“What, nothing to say about my appearance, Raylan?” he asks, cocking his hip to the side as leaned against the doorjamb of the front door.  
“You have less hair than I remember.”  
  
Boyd’s eyes go wide, hand slowly to his chest, all showmanship and drama, “You wound me, Raylan, you truly do. Is that all you have to say to a friend you haven’t seen for so long?”  
  
“You rather I wax poetic and talk about the glory days?”  
  
“The night is young, Raylan,” and he’s tipping forward, finally moving towards Raylan.  
  
“Well, before you break out the Jim Beam-”  
  
“Oh, for an occasion like this, I’m sure I could find us a jar of apple pie, if we really wanted to reminisce that is,” he breaks in as he begins to step forward, slow, like a cat stalking its prey.  
  
Raylan huffs, knowing what memories have to be playing through the other’s mind. “Or shine,” he corrects, “there is one formality we have to get through.”  
  
“And what formality could that be, Raylan?”  
  
“The one concerning your dearly departed brother’s wife.”  
  
There’s a pause, before he’s breathing out her name,“Ava,” blank look on his face as if he had to actually think about the answer. Raylan takes some small victory in that; it was so rare anyone caught Boyd off guard. Boyd’s face clears the next second though, the game back in his eyes. “And what about my widow-in-law concerns you and me, Raylan?”  
  
“Well, there is the talk of retribution on your end, as your lovely friend from earlier couldn’t stop shoutin’. Seemed pretty sure of himself.”  
  
“And what do you think, Raylan?”  
  
“I think I might know you a bit better than this Dewey Crowe,” and Boyd seems genuinely pleased at the answer, but his eyes sharpen too, as if he’s looking for something else. Raylan can’t think of more to say so just adjusts his hat.  
  
The movement catches Boyd’s eye. “The hat looks good, Raylan,” he says instead of answering the question from earlier.  
  
“Just decided it fit one day.”  
  
There’s a quick, sharp laugh from Boyd and then he’s moving closer again. “Now, if you will so permit me, Raylan, can I ask you a question?”  
  
“You can ask, Boyd, but depending on it I may not be liable to answer.”  
  
There’s a flash of teeth, something more genuine before it closes again, going back to the game. Boyd hunches down, voice quieting as if they’re sharing some sort of secret or conspiracy. “Now I heard back in Miami, you had a little trouble concerning that gun of yours; that you gave some two bit thug twenty-four hours to leave town or you’d shoot, and that’s why you find yourself in your home state of Kentucky again.”  
  
“Is there a question in that, Boyd?” he asks, mocking the other’s conspiratorial tone.  
  
“Why Raylan, I thought it was rather obvious, but if you need it stated so plainly; is it true you shot a man in cold blood?”  
  
“It was justified.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“He pulled first,” Raylan said with a shrug.  
  
“But you did warn him?” and there’s something in Boyd’s eyes as he asks it, some fervorous light that Raylan can’t quite decipher. Raylan merely tips his head. The clap that follows is startling, conspicuously loud against the near silence, as is the whoop from Boyd soon after. “Now, Raylan Givens, if that ain’t Harlan brand justice, I don’t know what is.”  
  
“I like to think of it as justice justice.”  
  
Another sharp laugh from Boyd, before his eyes harden, and there’s a danger in his face, though Raylan can’t suss out what kind it is. “Now, what would you say to someone if they gave you the same warning?” he asks, trailing closer again to where there’s barely three feet between them, only the space of the dining room doorway separating them.  
  
“I’d tell them that if you make me pull, I’ll put you down.”  
  
And the answer seems to delight Boyd for some reason, though Raylan can’t exactly say why. He shifts again, hand sneaking behind his back as he opens his mouth and is speaking. But for some reason, Raylan doesn’t hear it, it’s lost, drowned out by a crack in the air, and it’s so familiar to Raylan yet so completely foreign in that moment that he has trouble placing it. It isn’t until he looks away from the wide-eyed look on Boyd’s face to the red blooming across his chest that Raylan knows the sound.  
  
It’s like slow motion, Boyd falling to his knees, and it’s never been like that for Raylan, slow and torturous. It’s usually some quick, dirty thing, bang and done in the next instant, but not with Boyd. It takes a second for his brain to catch up to what’s happening, and when it does Raylan is lurching forward, laying his hand on top of Boyd’s, pressing harder than he ever has before, trying to stop the red from spreading even further.  
  
“Boyd, Boyd look at me,” he’s saying, surprised at just how steady he sounds for as much as his hands are shaking. “Just breathe and look at me.”  
  
“Raylan,” he rasps out, chest rising up as he grunts through the pain. “Did you shoot me?”  
  
“Don’t be an idiot, Boyd, I didn’t even touch my gun. Speaking of,” and he turns to look at the wide-eyed Ava, standing in between the kitchen and the dining room, gun still up though loose in her hands. “Ava, you put that thing down before I’m forced to shoot you,” and he’s cursing himself, because although he had taken her rifle, he hadn’t thought to look for anything else—as if the house of Bowman Crowder would only have one gun in it.  
  
She blinks for a moment, eyes glued to Boyd and Raylan’s hand on his chest, gun dropping slowly. “I’m sorry, Raylan, I thought he was-”  
  
“Don’t matter what you thought right now, Ava, just put the gun down and get me the phone. Now!” he says when she just stands there. The barking tone has her moving, setting the gun on the table as she goes to where she had last seen Raylan’s cell.  
  
“You know Raylan, with the light behind you, you seem almost like an angel, come down from heaven itself.” Because of course Boyd is still talking, even with a hole ripped through his chest—Raylan didn’t think there was any force of God that could shut up Boyd Crowder.  
  
“Boyd, what’d I say about being stupid?”  
  
“I am merely stating, Raylan,” and he pauses to choke out some blood, spitting the pink foam to the side. “That is it not a wholly terrible thing to see, in one’s last moments.”  
  
Raylan rolls his eyes at the drama, though there’s a part of him that’s pissed at Boyd for saying as such, because there’s more red than Raylan thought there ought to be. He takes the phone from Ava, dialing, ignoring the blood he gets all over the contraption, as he responds to Boyd, “I didn’t come back to Harlan just to see you die, jackass.”  
  
Boyd smiles at that, white teeth red, “But you did come back,” as if he has to affirm it.  
  
“I did,” Raylan says before he’s calling into the phone for an ambulance, just making out Boyd’s whispered words as he barks orders.  
  
“That’s providence, Raylan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I might turn this into a longer work, but for now it's gonna stay as a little one shot. Title to change if I do turn it into something longer.


End file.
